Favorite Liar
by Kaiyote
Summary: The only thing he had managed was self preservation at the cost of his little brother. Set during Don't Look Back.


**If you want to read a better-formatted version, please go to my Fanfiction Livejournal _theblackmonster._**

**A/N:** Oh, Nathan, guilty consciences have never look so cool. Err, yes. _Italicized_ sentences in this would be Nathan's own lovely guilty conscience.

This takes place during _Don't Look Back_, and it does mention events that happened in _Genesis_. So, uhm, if you haven't seen either you might not want to read this if you want to remain spoiler-free.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Heroes.

**Warnings: **None, really.

**Favorite Liar**

* * *

_Liar._

It slipped out so easily, more easily than it should have.

_You lied to him._

Nathan had been telling lies for as long as he could remember, and one more added to the score shouldn't have bothered him as much as this one did now. But this lie was far worse than any he had ever told, and ever told to Peter at that.

He couldn't even bear to look at any of the mirrors on his way home from the hospital. Every single mirror only served to mock him, taunt him with the image of his own deceitful face and the way Peter had looked after he had told him what had "really" happened.

He wanted to shatter all of them for this, destroy them all so that the shards that came from them would be far too small to reflect much of anything. More than even hating to see his own reflection in said mirrors, he hated remembering the way Peter had looked.

He never wanted to see him that way again.

_Your own baby brother, you lied to him._

It could've been ironic, really.

_You only wanted to save yourself. Did he even matter to you?_

He was supposed to be Peter's brother. _His_ big brother, his protector. But for all Nathan could remember he had never been that much of a protector of Peter, if anything he had caused more harm to him than good. (Although probably more harm now than when the two of them were growing up.)

None of the lies, the lack of his protection over Peter had ever been as horrible or as great as it had been today.

Today he had not only caught Peter as he fell, but he had saved Peter, for one brief moment, anyway. He had saved Peter, for once in his life, and then he threw it all away, just to save himself.

Peter had been falling all over again, this time from his loss of memory.

The only thing Peter had been expecting of him was to tell him what had happened, why he was in the hospital bed. How he had ended up there. The truth, that was the only thing Peter had wanted from him. And the only thing he had managed was self-preservation at the cost of his little brother.

At the cost of himself, the cost of the person he should have been.

_How could you do that to him? He trusted you, he wanted to believe in you more than anything, and you betrayed that trust by_ lying _to him._

Every mistake, every lie was laid out in front of him. From the mirror in his hands to every mirror he would see afterward, to Peter's face the next time he would see him, and those eyes that would haunt him forever.

The mirror he had held in his hands, that he still couldn't bear to look at, shattered as it hit the floor. All the shards and fragments only managed to distort his face as he glanced down at them, just for a second. It was a fitting image of himself, really.

Utterly broken and not as it should have been, even if it could still function.

A son, who was only that, who could almost completely disregard his family and barely seem care that he had been doing so. A brother, who could never be what his younger brother wanted him to be, needed him to be. His protector.

_Wasn't there a time when you would do anything to save_ him_? Wasn't that what you were trying to do when he jumped and you_ caught_ him when he_ fell?

The shards and their distorted image changed slightly as he moved away from them, unable to not glance at them once more, and the only thing he could see in them were Peter. Peter as he lied to him, Peter as he woke up.

Peter as he caught him. Peter as he fell. Peter as he jumped, and the only person Nathan had ever managed to save was himself.

_What kind of person does that? To their own brother? Try and make them believe they tried to kill themselves rather than tell the truth? Try and make them believe that their big brother didn't save them? Didn't, couldn't, wouldn't catch them when they fell?_

This time he had been the only one to make Peter fall, and Nathan, once again, could never catch him.

_Liar._


End file.
